Watch out all you flies.

But I must admit – at first, I didn’t like this reference to writer’s block in a children’s book. Why tell kids about getting stuck so early on? I was even more upset when my daughter sat down to write a poem and several minutes later announced she was “in a writer’s block.” Seriously? Five is too young for writer’s block! Of course, several minutes later she was off doing something else, forgot all about her writer’s block, and later that day wrote her poem.

Then I realized the problem.  I was imbuing those two words –“Writer’s Block!” – with much more power than they should hold. I was pouring a lifetime’s worth of bad press and negativity into them – everything I’ve read or heard about writer’s block and the myriad ways, some fairly convoluted and time consuming, to get unstuck. But why do that?

In the end, writer’s block is whatever you make it. You can figure out what’s really going on and work around it, or realize you just don’t want to write – today, tomorrow, maybe ever. What I really like about Ms. Glass’s explanation of writer’s block is that she shrinks it back down to what it really is: not an excuse to do nothing, not something to bemoan or dwell on, but something that happens to everyone and goes away.  And that’s a good lesson for all of us to learn!

Now, for the coffee.

In honor of coffee, and inspired by one of my daughter’s favorite poems – George Shannon’s Dig In (reprinted in Fancy Nancy: Poet Extradorinaire! and also here online) – a little copy change fun:

Buy a little, buy a lot, buy fresh beans to fill your pot.
Brew a little, brew a lot, brew the darkest roast you’ve bought.
Wait a little, wait a lot, coffee stronger than you thought!
Drink a little, drink a lot, share the coffee that you’ve got!

Plum tree bark

Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Too tired even to grab pen and paper, you tell yourself, I must remember this, must remember this, must rem . . .

And then morning comes, and your idea is unreachable, cast adrift with that bit of dialogue from two nights ago, while courting last week’s heroine, tangling in the serpentine web of May’s plot twist, or perhaps surfing a long-lost story arc.

Speaking of sleep, here’s some justification for that afternoon nap – power napping before writing may have benefits! Assuming you manage to jot things down.

But my purpose here isn’t to go into a listing of lengths. What caught my attention this week were the submission guidelines for Reflection’s Edge. (And, before I continue, let me say that I enjoy and respect Reflection’s Edge and am absolutely not picking on them! Just trying to understand something I’ve not considered before . . .) Their guidelines say that they typically accept stories between 500 – 10,000 words, but do NOT accept flash fiction. Now there may be other journals that do the same. In fact, I’m sure there are, and I just haven’t noticed them yet, or if I have, I haven’t noticed this distinction. But this time, I had a piece I wanted to submit that was just under 900 words. When I wrote this particular piece, I did not think of it as “flash” or otherwise. I was not trying to write to a word count. I simply wrote the story as it came to me, polished it, and then considered what it might be.

Now here’s where I’m getting caught up. I’ve always considered the flash fiction label as involving two things – under 1000 words (depending on the market), and a complete story in the traditional sense (i.e., a narrative containing, in however abbreviated a sense, characters, plot arc, beginning, middle, and end). But, if a story can be 500 – 1000 words long, and NOT flash fiction, then what does that make it?

Let me list a few more things that Reflection’s Edge does not accept: plays, novels, poems, and prose poems. These, I can understand. A play and a poem are not a narrative story. A novel exceeds their accepted word length. (Another point I should mention – they also exclude short shorts, which raises the same dilemma as the flash exception, since short shorts are sometimes defined synonymously with flash.)

So here is the question: What is this difference between flash fiction and NOT flash fiction? And do these guidelines imply that there is something more to the definition of flash fiction than length and completeness as a narrative story? If so, what is that difference? Is it the intent to write flash? Or has flash somehow taken on a further meaning, that limits it to places that explicitly or exclusively publish flash, or maybe to something else?

And, better yet, how do I decide if my under 1000 word story is flash fiction or not?

Thoughts?

I’ve met several writers in the last few days, all just beginning, and had the usual discussion of when do you call yourself a writer. There are so many answers to that question: when you actually sit down and write on some kind of regular basis, when you blog, when you finish something, when you’re finally published (ah, but by who, and how, and where ?), if and when you make some money (but how much, and do copies count?), and on and on . . .

But tonight I’m thinking you can call yourself a writer when you finally begin to rewrite. When you realize it’s okay to “murder your darlings,” as the saying goes. When you realize that nothing you’ve put down on paper (or computer) is sacred. It can all be made better and if you mess it all up in the process, so what? Go back to the original and start again. Take it a new direction. Play with it, work the problem spots, make it pretty, make it sing.